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’’The  Missionary 
Problem" 


A Reply  to  "The  Jewish 
Comment" 


By 

Philip  Sidersky 

The  Yiddish 
Evangelic 


Baltimore,  Maryland 
November,  1909 


" iKxssimtartJ  Problem.” 

A very  lengthy  article,  occupying  more 
than  two  pages  in  space  and  with  large 
head-lines  on  its  first  page,  entitled  “The 
Missionary  Problem,”  appeared  in  a re- 
cent issue  of  the  Jewish  Comment,  one 
of  the  leading  Jewish  weekly  papers  in 
America. 

The  very  fact  that  a prominent  Jewish 
paper  should  give  so  much  of  its  valuable 
space  to  discuss  such  a subject — “The 
Missionary  Problem” — is  in  itself  a 
proof  that  some  of  the  leaders  of  Juda- 
ism are  realizing  that  the  activities  of 
Christian  Missions  to  the  Jews  are  mak- 
ing a great  inroad  among  the  Jews  of 
this  country,  and  that  it  is  impossible  for 
them  to  ignore  it  altogether.  That  Chris- 
tianity has  been  and  is  plucking  some  of 
the  flowers  of  Judaism  is  being  proven 
without  a doubt. 

In  reading  over  that  lengthy  and  con- 
spicuous article  I notice  that  it  does  not 
contain  any  defence  of  Judaism  against 


Christ,  cither  Biblical  or  National,  but 
it  merely  contains  many  misconstrued 
statements  about  Missions  to  the  Jews 
and  Hebrew  Christians  in  general. 

The  writer  of  that  article  seems  to 
have  spent  some  time  to  gather  his  care- 
less statements  at  England,  from  where 
he  claims  to  have  recently  hailed. 

In  the  first  place,  he  seems  to  be  greatly 
concerned  about  the  great  activity  of  the 
Church  of  England  in  spending  a great 
deal  of  money  in  their  efforts  to  give  the 
Gospel  to  the  Jews,  but  leaves  out  the 
fact  that  the  Episcopal  Church  has  been 
blessed  with  three  of  its  Bishops  as 
Hebrew  Christians,  and  many  prominent 
clergymen  and  professors  in  that  Church 
came  from  the  Jewish  fold.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  Jewish  writer  of  that  ar- 
ticle seems  to  overlook  the  fact  that 
thousands  of  dollars  are  spent  by  wealthy 
Jews  in  this  country  by  building  very 
elegant  Synagogues,  paying  very  large 
sums  to  Rabbis  and  fine  choirs  (and  in 
some  instances  hiring  Gentile  singers), 
and  how  many  Jewish  men  do  we  find 
there  at  an  ordinary  service  on  Saturday 


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mornings  (the  Jewish  Sabbaths)?  No 
true  Christian  would  take  this  up  as  a 
leading  argument  against  the  Jews,  and 
I simply  bring  this  up  to  call  the  atten- 
tion of  the  Jewish  Comment  to  the 
old  saying:  “He  that  lives  in  a glass 
house  shall  not  throw  a stone.” 

Secondly,  that  article  seems  to  criti- 
cize some  of  the  methods  used  in  the  ef- 
forts to  reach  the  Jews  with  the  Gospel. 
Every  true  Christian  admits  that  the 
Christian  Church  is  not  up  to  perfection, 
but  are  all  the  methods  in  the  modern 
Synagogue  perfect  ? Are  there  not  many 
Jews  to-day  who  are  not  in  sympathy 
with  some  of  the  methods  in  the  modern 
Synagogue ? 

Thirdly,  I am  very  sorry  to  see  the 
very  bitter  spirit  shown  in  that  article 
towards  those  Jews  who  have  been  led 
to  follow  the  dictates  of  their  consciences 
by  accepting  and  endeavoring  to  follow 
the  teachings  of  Jesus,  which  were  pre- 
dicted in  the  Old  Testament  and  fulfilled 
in  the  New  Testament. 

The  Jewish  people  should  be  the  last 
to  allow  prejudice  to  be  a hindrance  to 


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their  religious  advancement,  because 
they  have  themselves  suffered  greatly 
through  the  prejudices  of  other  races  and 
religions. 

The  New  Testament  was  written  by 
Jews.  This  fact  should  make  the  Jews 
anxious  to  read  the  New  Testament  for 
themselves,  and  not  take  their  informa- 
tion second-hand. 

The  writer  in  that  lengthy  article  on 
the  “Missionary  Problem”  says:  “The 

Meshumed  (renegade,  Jewish  name  for 
a Jew  who  follows  the  dictates  of  his 
conscience  by  accepting  the  life  and 
teachings  of  Jesus)  is  a standing  dis- 
grace, which  the  church  militant  has 
imposed  on  the  Jewish  people.”  I will 
call  the  attention  of  the  writer  of  that 
sentence  to  the  following  item,  which  is 
taken  from  the  New  York  Times  of  Au- 
gust 13th,  1909: 

“ Emma  Goldman  cast  anathemas  at 
the  Police  Department,  at  all  Govern- 
ments, at  all  religions,  at  militarism,  at 
those  who  oppose  strikes,  at  Philistines, 
and  at  self-satisfied  members  of  the  mid- 
dle class,  at  Kings,  and  at  Presidents,  at 

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the  postponed  Anarchist  meeting  which 
took  place  at  Terrace  Lyceum,  206  East 
Broadway,  last  night.  Seldom  has  this 
leader  of  the  anarchistic  forces  ex- 
pressed herself  so  volubly. 

“It  was  also  stated  that  Commissioner 
Baker  had  asked  what  Miss  Goldman 
intended  to  say  upon  this  occasion.  This 
information  was  not  vouchsafed  to  him, 
but  he  was  assured  that  Miss  Goldman 
would  be  perfectly  willing  to  personally 
take  the  consequences  of  anything  she 
said.  So  that  she  might  live  up  to  this 
she  spoke  in  English  in  order  that  the 
policemen  in  the  back  of  the  room  could 
have  their  ears  easily  burned,  in  spite  of 
the  fact  that  many  of  those  present  only 
understood  Yiddish.” 

The  question  arises:  Why  does  not 
the  Jewish  Comment  give  some  of  its 
space  to  attack  Emma  Goldman,  who  is 
misleading  many  Jews,  and  who  is  the 
only  real  disgrace  to  the  Jews  in  Amer- 
ica? Last  year  Emma  Goldman  spoke 
in  Baltimore  to  over  one  thousand  Jews 
in  the  Yiddish  language.  A great  por- 
tion of  her  audience  was  compQsed  of 


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recently  arrived  Jews  from  Europe,  into 
whose  minds  she  has  inculcated  very 
dangerous  ideas.  The  Chief  of  Police  of 
Baltimore  tried  his  best  to  stop  that 
meeting,  but  could  not  find  a law  in  ex- 
istence to  help  him  out.  Then  why  did 
not  the  Jczi’ish  Comment,  which  is  pub- 
lished in  Baltimore,  work  up  a petition 
against  her  speaking  in  Baltimore,  the 
way  it  did  in  trying  to  stop  me  from 
preaching  the  Gospel  to  the  Jews  in  the 
open  air,  by  devoting  a great  deal  of 
space  in  agitation  against  my  preaching 
the  Gospel  of  peace  and  love  towards  all 
men  ? 

The  very  bitter  attitude  of  some  of  the 
Jewish  leaders  towards  us,  because  we 
have  accepted  Jesus,  confirms  us  in  our 
faith,  for  we  find  in  Luke  21  :iy,  the 
words  of  our  Saviour:  “ And  ye  shall  be 
hated  for  My  name’s  sake.” 

But  it  is  very  blessed  to  realize  that  the 
Gospel  is  a power  to  every  one  that  be- 
lieves it,  and  it  is  also  very  blessed  to 
realize  that  as  we  study  history  we  find 
that  hundreds  of  Hebrew  Christians 
have  notably  preached,  convincingly 


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taught  and  earnestly  written,  on  behalf 
of  the  faith  “once  delivered  to  the  saints” 
during  the  last  one  hundred  years,  and 
among  some  of  them  we  may  refer 
to  the  yeoman  service  in  the  cause  of 
Christ  which  has  been  rendered  by  He- 
brew Christians,  who  have  dedicated 
their  knowledge  of  foreign  tongues  to 
the  work  of  translating  the  Scriptures 
into  other  languages,  or  else  of  opening 
up  the  treasures  of  the  Word  of  God 
through  commentaries.  In  this,  Hebrew 
Christians  have  been  zealous  to  use  their 
powerful  pens  as  ready  writers,  as  the 
following  names  testify: 

Dr.  Habershon;  Dr.  Alfred  Eder- 
sheim,  Grinfield  Lecturer  on  the  LXX  in 
• the  University  of  Oxford,  and  author  of 
works  of  world-wide  fame,  such  as 
“The  Temple,  its  Ministry  and  Ser- 
vices;” “The  History  of  the  Jewish 
Nation;”  and  “Life  and  Times  of  Jesus 
the  Messiah,”  the  latter  of  which  has 
passed  through  eight  editions ; Dr. 
Adolph  Saphir,  a man  like  Apollos, 
“mighty  in  the  Scriptures;”  Paul  Isaac 
Hershon,  Dr.  C.  H.  A.  Kalker,  Dr.  Lcit- 


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ncr,  Professor  Caspari,  the  Danish  Theo- 
logian ; Professor  Th.  Benfey,  Professor 
Heydemann,  Dr.  H.  Crosby  of  N ew  York, 
Lichtenstein  of  Budapest,  and  Rabino- 
witz  of  Kischineff,  whose  writings  have 
influenced  many  thousands  of  Russian 
Jews;  Rabbi  Sclnvartzenburg,  Dr.  Veit 
of  Austria,  Dr.  Capadose  of  Amsterdam, 
physician,  statesman  and  divine ; Dr. 
Moses  Margoliouth  of  the  British  Mu- 
seum, and  J.  H.  Bisenthal,  the  great  Bib- 
lical commentator. 

Various  Bible  Societies  are  indebted 
for  the  translations  of  the  Scriptures  to 
the  labours  of  Hebrew  Christians,  such 
as  Aaron  Bernstein,  G.  LI.  Handler,  Isaac 
Salkinson,  James  Adler,  Marcus  Berg- 
man, Herschonshon,  and  C.  D.  Ginsburg. 
The  last  named  is  the  author  of  possibly 
the  greatest  Biblical  work  of  the  age — 
“Massoreth  ha  Massorah” — in  three  folio 
volumes,  a work  considered  so  valuable 
that  Queen  Victoria  allowed  one  of  her 
own  special  messengers,  as  a safety,  to 
take  the  MS.  to  the  printers  in  Vienna. 
It  was  said  of  him  at  the  time  of  the  Re- 
vision of  the  Bible  in  1881,  that  he  was 


9 


the  soul  of  the  “Revisers.”  The  Rev.  Pro- 
fessor David  Margoliouth,  whose  mar- 
velous intellect  has  ever  been  used  in  the 
cause  of  the  “faith  once  delivered  to  the 
saints his  successes  at  Oxford  Uni- 
versity have  never  been  approached  by 
any  other  man.  In  1878  he  was  both 
Hertford  and  Ireland  scholar;  the  fol- 
lowing year  saw  him  gain  the  Gaisford 
Prize,  as  well  as  becoming  Pusey  and 
Ellerton  scholar.  In  1880  he  won  the 
Houghton  Syriac  Prize ; the  next  year  he 
was  made  Boden  Sanscrit  scholar;  win- 
ning also  the  Craven  scholarship.  Two 
years  later  he  was  Kennicott  Hebrew 
scholar  and  Derby  scholar.  In  1887  he 
gained  the  Senior  Kennicott.  At  last  the 
University  offered  him  $1,000.00  (One 
Thousand  Dollars)  as  a special  honor,  a 
sum  of  money  which  he  devoted  to  a visit 
to  Arabia,  in  order  to  ga’n  a knowledge 
of  colloquial  Arabic.  Today  he  is  Laudian 
Professor  of  Arabic. 

Another  Hebrew  Christian — one  of 
the  heroes  of  the  last  century — was  Sam- 
uel Isaac  Joseph  Schereschewsky,  Bishop 
of  Shanghai  in  the  American  Episcopal 
Church,  who  died  October  15,  1906.  His 
labors  in  translation  work  were  truly 
“more  abundant.”  He  translated  the 
whole  Bible  into  Mandarin,  the  lan- 
guage of  the  people,  which  version  is 


10 


used  by  the  American  and  British  and 
Foreign  Bible  Society.  He  also  made  a 
translation  of  the  whole  of  the  Scriptures 
into  Wenli,  the  classical  language  of 
China,  so  that  some  three  hundred  mil- 
lions of  the  Chinese  nation  have  the 
Word  of  God  today  in  a ‘‘language  un- 
derstood of  the  people.” 

Great  Missionary  heroism  was  exhibi- 
ted by  a Hebrew  Christian,  Rev.  Albert 
J.  Nathan,  who  died  on  the  7th  of  Sep- 
tember, 1909.  Mr.  Nathan,  the  great 
missionary,  was  well  known  through  his 
connection  with  the  rescue  of  Ellen  Stone, 
who  was  held  by  Macedonian  bandits,  at 
the  risk  of  hk  own  life. 

Nor  has  it  been  only  in  the  cause  of 
Biblical  truth  that  the  Christian  Jew  has 
proved  himself  a power,  as  the  following 
names  show  in  the  school  of  historical 
research : 

George  Ebers,  whose  history  of  Egypt 
was  in  his  day  the  greatest  work  that  had 
then  appeared,/  and  is  still  used  as  a 
mine  for  more  modern  writers  to  dip  into 
for  accurate  information , Dr.  Samuel 
A.  Binnon,  whose  two  elaborate  folio 
volumes  on  “Ancient  Egypt,  or  Miz- 
raim,”  are  masterpieces  on  the  art  and 
archaeology  of  that  wonderful  land : he 
was  an  Italian  Jew,  of  whom  it  was 
stated  that  he  knew  over  sixty  languages. 


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Isaac  de  Costa,  Professor  P.  Jaffe,  and 
many  other  Hebrew  Christians  have  also 
enriched  the  world  by  their  historical 
writings. 

We  might  also  mention  the  name  of 
Blowitz,  the  late  Correspondent  of  the 
London  Times  in  Paris,  a diplomat  of 
the  first  order,  who  averted  war  in  1875 
between  France  and  Germany,  and  later 
on  brought  about  peace  between  the  two 
countries,  by  not  writing  what  he  kneu' 
and  might  have  done.  Also  Baron  Reu- 
ter, the  pioneer  of  telegraphic  news 
agencies;  and  Felix  Mendelssohn,  the 
great  musical  composer,  and  many  oth- 
ers who  are  an  honor  to  the  Jewish  race 
and  a blessing  to  the  Christian  Church. 


Gospel  literature  for  the  Jews  in  the 
Yiddish,  Hebrew,  and  English,  can  be 
had  from  Philip  Sidersky,  300  North 
Eden  street,  Baltimore,  Md. 

The  expenses  for  printing  this  Gospel 
literature  for  the  Jews  is  not  provided 
by  any  of  the  Denominational  Mission 
Boards,  but  by  voluntary  contributions 
from  Christians  of  all  denominations, 
therefore  any  one  who  is  interested  in 
helping  to  spread  the  Gospel  among  the 
Jews  can  have  some  share  in  helping 
towards  the  expenses  of  printing  Gospel 
literature  for  the  Jews. 

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